Le: Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes, a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, begins with a reconstruction of the Cabanon, a small house the architect designed in 1951 in the south of France overlooking Monte Carlo. The cabin is a jigsaw puzzle of built-in cabinets based on the system of measured proportions Le Corbusier called Le Modulor. It was his hideaway in nature, and it was where he died in August of 1965.

The front-and-center placement of the Cabanon introduces the show’s compelling argument: that Le Corbusier was more influenced by nature and a dialog between man and the natural world than we are accustomed to thinking, considering his reputation for sweepingly modern urban plans and inventive ahistorical block housing.

Born Charles Edouard-Jeanneret in October of 1887, Le Corbusier was one of the most influential thinkers and builders of the 20th century. Born in a small town in the Jura mountains of Switzerland, where he started his career building houses, he went on to plan cities in places as farflung as Rio de Janiero and Chandigarh, India. Le Corbusier was also a painter and a writer, authoring numerous books and essays in support of his radical architectural ideas. The exhibit includes his first painting, a watercolor made in 1902 of the Jura landscape at the age of fifteen, showing his rapport with nature.

Early in his career, Le Corbusier traveled in 1911 to the east to see Rome, Athens and Istanbul. The trip marked a turning point towards the modern stripped down aesthetic that would become his hallmark. It was the starkness of the ancient ruins that influenced his eye. The pencil and gouache travel sketches from this journey demonstrate a deep and rich selection of colors and geometric sense of form. But decoration remained a fascination, and in 1912, Le Corbusier, still called Jeanneret, published his first book, a study of the decorative art movement in Germany.

After the trip, Le Corbusier returned to his hometown and began building houses vastly different from those he had worked on before. These include the Villa Favre-Jacot in Le Locle, Switzerland with a sweeping classical driveway portico; the Villa Jeanneret-Perret, called the Maison Blanche; and the Villa Schwob of 1916, known as the Villa Turque.

These differed greatly from his earlier designs, which featured a vernacular mountain style with decorative patterns influenced by nature motifs. The later houses were more streamlined and lacked external decorative details, although they still had interior detail. This can be seen in the reconstruction of the sitting room from the Maison Blanche, which was surprisingly colorful in deep hues of green and mauve wallpaper print.

By 1917, Le Corbusier moved to Paris and was inspired to paint by artist Amedee Ozenfant. He took the pseudonym Le Corbusier at this time to sign his provocative essays. There are eight remarkable still life paintings from this time in the exhibit, many using the motif of a guitar shape as focal point. Paris was Le Corbusier’s “Laboratory,” as the exhibit puts it, and he made many sketches of the city, including an “Imaginary Parisian Landscape” of 1917.

Architecturally, it would take ten years for Le Corbusier to fully mature as a designer, finding full expression of the stripped down minimalist aesthetic that would become his hallmark in a little known work highlighted here called the Villa Church.

This was a house for two Americans in a suburb of Paris Ville D’Avray, built during 1927-29, and it marked the first time bent tubular metal furniture was used in a residential setting, according to the exhibit. It was in this period that he designed his most famous house, the Villa Savoye at Poissy of 1928-31, a simple square box with ramp-like promenade throughout the open plan that radically influenced modern architecture.

In 1928, Le Corbusier changed his approach to painting and entered a prolific period inspired by the work of Fernand Leger, in which he responded to what he called “objects of poetic reaction.” These were shells, driftwood, stone, bone and a pine cone that Le Corbusier had collected from nature. The objects included a crab shell that may have inspired the shape of the roof at Notre Dame du Haut Chapel at Ronchamp of 1950-1955, strengthening the show’s main argument that even the machine-aesthetic Le Corbusier style was derived from natural sources.

One of the most interesting items in the show is a set of drawings made during a lecture Le Corbusier gave at Princeton University on November 16, 1935. It was on this trace paper that Le Corbusier worked out his theory of housing and urbanism as a harmony between man and nature based on the 24-hour solar cycle.

There are sine curves showing the day and night cycle of the sun and pie charts dividing the day into three parts, where the largest portion of the day was reserved for “Loisirs” or pleasure, showing how Le Corbusier thought about planning and housing as a study of humanity and its interaction with nature itself. This will remain Le Corbusier’s place in the history of architecture, at the intersection of the natural and the man-made, a tension between man and his surroundings as a machine for living.

Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes on view through September 23, 2013 at MoMA,11 West 53rd Street, 212-708-9400, www.moma.org

Lisa Tannenbaum is an art historian and photographer. Her images can be viewed at lisatannenbaumphotography.com